Vol 53 No 18 | SOMALIABRITAIN Monitoring on hold 7th September 2012 Britain’s Department for International Development has taken no step towards setting up the Joint Financial Management Board promised at February’s London Conference on Somalia, Af...
Vol 53 No 16 | SOMALIA August will be hot 3rd August 2012 The elders are warming to their constitutional role, while Kenya weighs up the taking of Kismayo The 135 Somali elders whose role is to appoint a Constituent Assembly have responded to the warm international welcome they have received by showing they want to take at least one ...
Vol 53 No 13 | SOMALIA End of transition looms 22nd June 2012 While Al Shabaab suffers reverses, the government that replaces the TFG in August may turn out to be little different There is a mood of broad optimism among many commanders from the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) about recent military successes. Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen, howe...
Vol 53 No 8 | SOMALIATURKEY Turkish aid 13th April 2012 Turkey is underscoring its engagement in Somalia through development projects in Somaliland and Puntland. It sees the projects as proving to the United States and European Union th...
Vol 53 No 7 | SOMALIAUGANDAANALYSIS Al Shabaab’s waiting game 30th March 2012 Regardless of the recent defeats of Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen, senior African Union Mission in Somalia commanders privately admit that the next phase of military operations is fraught with potential difficulties. Since forcing Al Shabaab out of Mogadishu in August, five years after Amisom first came to Somalia, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force’s 5,500-strong contingent is slowly moving out to assume control of new territory beyond the capital. Any bolder moves to occupy territory further afield, however, depend on leaving currently-occupied zones to Transitional Federal Government (TFG) soldiers and police, whose competence and reliability are in some doubt. Amisom commanders also worry because communications are scant and coordination absent with the Ethiopian forces to the south. Now that the Kenyan forces have been re-hatted as Amisom, links with them should improve. Lack of trust in the TFG forces who have to take over the Ugandan and Burundian positions when Amisom moves out of Mogadishu is making Amisom tread cautiously. The TFG forces are ...
Vol 53 No 5 | SOMALIA Cashing in on chaos 2nd March 2012 The work of a former government accountant again exposes financial confusion and crime on a grand scale While February’s London Conference on Somalia sought ways out of the military and political quagmire, a former civil servant in the Transitional Federal Government was documenting ...
Vol 53 No 5 | SOMALIA Board to probe finances 2nd March 2012 Privately, diplomats in Mogadishu agree that the reports by Abdirizak Jama ‘Fartaag’ are the best source of financial information about the Mogadishu government.
Vol 53 No 5 | SOMALIABRITAIN Martial music plays in London 2nd March 2012 Whispers of possible negotiations with Al Shabaab were drowned out by the drums of war The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) may have been hosting the London Conference on Somalia but there was no doubting that Downing Street was in the driving seat.
Vol 53 No 4 | SOMALIABRITAIN No great expectations 17th February 2012 British Prime Minister David Cameron’s grand conference will bring together many parties but no one is forecasting a breakthrough After two decades of political mayhem, Somalis and more perspicacious foreign diplomats are intensely sceptical about high-level conferences. Many approach the London Conference on...
Vol 53 No 2 | SOMALIACORRECTION The war goes regional 20th January 2012 In Africa Confidential Vol 53 No 1, we wrote that Al Qaida commander Fazul Abdullah Mohamed had been killed by a United States drone in June 2011 (‘The war goes regional’). In fact...
